


we will grow old as friends

by cyanica



Series: maybe i just took too much cough medicine [whumptober 2020] [9]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Abandonment, Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Broken Promises, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Character Study, Communication Failure, Goodbyes, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt No Comfort, Lack of Communication, M/M, Missing Scene, One-Sided Attraction, Touch-Starved, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:54:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27168929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyanica/pseuds/cyanica
Summary: They could have danced in the way Steve never would back home, in ways they were never allowed to, in ways they never got to. The fighting had stop; the fallen were buried; the war was over, and that should have been enough for Steve –– but those who were left would always remember what was, what had been. Moving on wasn’t good enough.Or Steve is going to go back in time, and Bucky and his unrequited love have a few thoughts about it. They're not pretty ones.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: maybe i just took too much cough medicine [whumptober 2020] [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947775
Kudos: 26
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	we will grow old as friends

**Author's Note:**

> if you already didn’t like steve’s ending, this will make it five times worse, my guys. i really said: let’s throw in some unrequited-love!bucky and the inability to talk about your feelings into endgame's ending.
> 
> whumptober prompt day 12: broken down, broken trust
> 
> title from ‘sick of losing soulmates’ - dodie clark

"I’m going to go back,” Steve had said, and Bucky felt his heart plummet. They stood underneath the mossy willow trees beyond the shore of the crystal lake, and Bucky shouldn't have felt his chest come undone in the wake of Steve’s words, but he did. He peered out onto the open waters where the wreath had traveled into the centre of the clear blue like a vital organ keeping the lake at rest, and suddenly wanted the water to drown him. 

Bucky refused to look beside him where the warmth of Steve’s shoulder pressed against him, and see his friend’s so very tired eyes become blissfully dreamy at the thought of escaping and moving on – of letting all of _this_ go.

Naively – _foolishly_ – Bucky had had the same dreams, the ones where he wasn’t a soldier destined to fight for the rest of his life until the End of All Things where the world decided to end for the hundredth time. He _too_ had desired for a life he could have lived instead of the one condemned upon him. He too was tired.

But Bucky had never thought Steve was as foolish to think the _past_ of all places was there he could find that rest. So incredibly foolishly, Bucky had thought that maybe, _maybe_ Steve would’ve found whatever he was searching for right beside him – that maybe he could be satisfied with the broken imperfections of his best friend to grow old beside and eventually find their own wayward sense of peace in this mending world…

But that must not be good enough.

“I want to dance,” Steve had said – simply and with solidifying conviction, as if such a thing was impossible since he’d awoken in the dawn of the 21st century. 

Bucky wanted to scream.

Bucky wanted to scream and cry and take Steve within his arms until they were a chaotic mess of tired, mourning, broken bodies swaying in each other’s warmth to tuneless music and the sound of silence, because it wouldn’t have mattered what was playing, just that they were existing as they were. They could have danced in the way Steve never would back home, in ways they were never allowed to, in ways they never _got to_ – and it could have been the dance of the eternity. The fighting had stop; the fallen were buried; the war was over, and that should have been enough for Steve –

– but those who were left would always remember what was, what had been. _Moving on_ wasn’t good enough.

“I can’t stay here,” Steve had said – because he was done. He was done fixing the unholy messes that were the modern universe’s apocalypses and all its glorious world-ending disasters; done with the purpose of being a soldier despite it being all he ever wanted to be; and done with fixing the broken pieces of his best friend back together, because maybe some things stayed broken no matter if they were saved, Bucky thought.

Maybe this _was_ moving on, in its twisted, oxymoronic contradictory way that made Bucky want to smash his flesh and metallic hand against the earth until they were both mangled carcasses of bone fragments and shrapnel. Maybe accepting what was always going to be a broken mosaic built of a thousand fragmented, unsalvageable glass pieces as _complete,_ was its own twisted catharsis in an agonisingly insane way. 

And that made sense, Bucky thought. Steve was a dreamer who had fought with bird-bone fingers against men three times his size, while Bucky picked up what was left like broken pieces on the floor; he had been the one to beg for enlistment despite being on what may as well have been his deathbed, while Bucky had screamed that he would be killed faster than he could pick up a gun. Steve was a dreamer who masqueraded the truth as he did his own name – and so, _moving on_ became synonymous with _letting go_ as if the two phrases were gospel. 

And Bucky was a fool too, but wasn’t foolish in the way Steve had been, and even in the _now_ – in the age of extraterrestrial apocalypses and genocidal titans and time travel – where Bucky was also so very, very tired in the way Steve was, Bucky knew letting go of it all – of _this_ – wasn’t moving on in the way Steve convinced himself it could.

It was entrapment. Hiding away from the futures of the presence, and blissfully ignoring the realities of the past wasn’t the peace Steve needed to find –

Or at least it _shouldn’t_ be. 

It was abandonment. It was _letting go_ and _moving on_ in all the wrong ways in the hopes of finding absolution, _rest._ It was false serenity. It was lying to oneself in the way one lied when they believed they could defeat three guys in a back alley with bird-bone hands. It was lying to oneself in the way one lied when they believed they could fight a war without dying in the process.

It wasn’t _fair._

“It’s gonna be okay, Buck,” Steve had said. The two of them stood like two damned foolish cowards on the shore of the lake – one letting go of all the wrong things in order to find what was false serenity after the fray, and the other letting him.

Bucky couldn’t say a thing. He stood frozen and cold from the edge of the crystal lake, refusing to turn and face Steve, remaining as the lost fool that loved too hard and too much, and yet never enough. Not enough to pull Steve towards him, not even to scream at the things he wished to change, not even to take Steve dancing. 

Bucky stayed where he was, silent and still as the calm waters drifted with the weight of the wreath, and didn’t say anything – a damned fool, no more broken than he had been yesterday (or five years ago), but now as unsalvageable was dust in the atmosphere that not even Steve was willing to brush up off the floor, only because he’d thought he’s had done so already. He’d collected the stones, they’d snapped their fingers and Steve had brought Bucky home – and it should have been enough. 

It should have been enough to make him stay, to find peace in this fucked-up, broken world no more damaged than it had been fifty years ago where only the illusion of time could separate the two.

But Steve wanted to let go.

Maybe this world was one he was done saving. Maybe it didn’t need him anymore. Maybe Bucky would never confess that he himself _did._

And Bucky, frozen underneath the drooping willow tree with snowflakes of moss flaking down upon his shoulders from above, never said a word and watched the stranger as he left.


End file.
